


Hospital Alley Nights

by hufflepirate



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Exhaustion, Fluff, Gen, Huddling For Warmth, Sleepy Cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 16:00:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15416517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate
Summary: Beau, Caleb, and Nott drop their friends off at a hospital after a risky cross-country race only to find themselves suddenly without direction, energy, or any good way to stay within Frumpkin range of the hospital other than sleeping in a nearby alley.





	Hospital Alley Nights

**Author's Note:**

> This is gonna be an AU by the end of Thursday night, probably, but I just needed some exhausted BroT3 cuddles.
> 
> Side note, I'm not crazy about this title I came up with at 1 am last night, but I can't think of a better one. If you read this and think 'oh it should be called x' go ahead and hit me up in the comments. :P

It was a relief to come to a sudden halt 15 feet outside the hospital doors. Beau knew she should be making better sense of this, making better sense of _all_ of this, but she wasn't, and when Nott stopped in front of her and Caleb stopped behind her, it was all she could do not to just plop down in the middle of the street and sit with head in her hands until she could work through it all.

The drive here had been a nightmare. They'd pushed their stolen horses faster than they should have, keeping their stolen cart rolling well into the night without stopping until they were afraid the horses might drop dead or they might fall off the cart, themselves, from exhaustion. But with so _many_ people with the Firbolgs and their friends so _badly_ injured, this had been the only way. The nearest town with the nearest hospital and hours and hours to get there and a race against time and now - and now -

Nott was staring down a small alley, just staring, and Beau finally managed to say what she'd wanted to say several minutes ago. "Fuck visiting hours."

"Yes," Caleb said behind her, his eyes looking a little hollow when she glanced back at him, "Fuck visiting hours."

He'd been thinking clearly just minutes ago, when he caught her around the waist and whispered in her ear that they couldn't get in a fight in the hospital if they wanted their friends looked after, and he'd been thinking clearly enough after that to guide her out the front doors, but now something in his gaze was blank and empty, and not in the flickering Frumpkin way she was used to.

Nott turned back to them. "I know they told us where the nearest good inn is," she said thoughtfully. "But nobody said we _had_ to stay in an inn."

Nott was getting at something, but she'd slept in the cart and Beau and Caleb hadn't, not when the cart was so full of their friends and their friends were so badly off and they'd needed both of them together to drive so long. Beau tried to make the connections, but she couldn't.

"What are you thinking?" Caleb asked, apparently not following, either. A bad sign.

"I'm thinking we don't go to an inn. We stay here. We - we sleep here. It wouldn't be the first time we slept outside, in an alley. And then you can send Frumpkin to look after them and if anything goes wrong, we're right here. We can break in. We're ready."

"You want to sleep outside in an alley," Caleb repeated back, his voice light and hazy, unreadable.

"Yes," Nott answered.

"You want to sleep out in the cold and the wet in early winter, where we might be found by crown's guard who chase us off as vagabonds."

"Yes," Nott answered.

"Ok," he said.

"Oh," she said, and both of them turned to her.

Caleb's forehead furrowed. "Oh, Beau. Yes, we should have asked you. You can stay with us, if you like, or go to the inn."

Beau's brain felt like it was wrapped in heavy wool, and she wasn't even sure what she was going to say until the word came tumbling out: "Stay." She felt good about it, anyway, so she repeated herself. "I'll stay."

Caleb nodded, and Nott's face slid into a grin. "Good," she said. "We'll take the cart somewhere, or one of us will, and then we'll find a good place tucked in this alley - maybe there's a side door and we can use a doorway - and we'll be right here as soon as the sun is up and they're taking visitors again."

Beau groaned. The cart. She'd forgotten completely about the cart.

"Can we take the cart anywhere closer than the inn?" Caleb asked.

"How should I know?" Nott asked.

Beau didn't have an answer either, but exhaustion was pulling at her and being so close to their friends only to be separated again weighed even more heavily against her, and she didn't know anything as surely as she knew she _did not care_ what happened to the cart.

"Let's leave it," she said, "It's not really our cart anyway."

She wasn't sure what she meant by that. It wasn't anyone else's cart, because its original owner was dead. They weren't getting their old cart back, not with it left days and days and days behind them, before nearly all of this. But she felt empty, like her well had run dry, and all she had left was the idea of crawling into the alley with her stinky hobo wizard and her tiny goblin girl and falling asleep until they could get in to see their friends.

Caleb was staring at the cart, which was behind them at the entrance to the hospital, but he didn't seem to be able to think it through, either. He was silent, and his arms draped at his sides like he was too tired to lift them.

Nott stepped past her, taking Caleb's hand gently, and he turned to look down at her. "It's alright, Caleb," Nott said gently, "I'll find a stable. You two drove long enough. And I'll come right back."

Caleb nodded, and Nott turned back to Beau. "Did you hear that?" she asked, louder, "I'll be right back."

"Yeah," Beau managed, "I heard."

Nott climbed up onto the cart, a process that always looked challenging, but drove off competently enough. Beau watched her go, standing as still as Caleb, but as Nott and the cart rounded a corner, a yawn reminded her that she couldn't stand here forever. She'd been pinching herself on the cart next to Caleb to stay alert, and now that she was still, she wasn't sure she could stay awake if she didn't move.

Caleb turned at the sound of the yawn and she nodded to him once she'd finished it, turning toward the alley and trusting that he'd follow.

As soon as her face was turned into the wind, she realized her eyes had watered, and she wasn't sure whether it was from the exhaustion or the cold or the yawn or the fact that they'd just stood over their friends' unconscious forms and been told they had to leave. Either way, she didn't like it, and scrubbing her sleeve across her eyes to clear the tears gave Caleb time to raise his arm up and slip it around her waist again.

Usually, she'd be a jerk about that, because it wasn't exactly ideal, but she'd needed the guidance in the hospital when her brain wasn't working so well, and it only took one step toward the alley for her to realize Caleb needed it now. The wizard's weight was heavier against her shoulder now, and she put her own arm around him in return, angling them toward the small alley and hoping he would be able to find them some cover, even without Nott.

She'd slept in plenty of uncomfortable beds, and she'd done plenty of camping, but this was new, and other than the instinctive knowledge that they needed to get out of the wind, she wasn't sure what they were looking for.

Caleb's head moved back and forth, scanning the alley as they entered it. They weren't sure what these buildings were, other than neighbors to the hospital, but the building on the right had several large barrels up against the wall. Beau couldn't tell which of them was steering anymore, but they went toward it together.

The two barrels were full of water, with a layer of ice on top, and Beau copied Caleb as he looked up toward the roof. A gutter ran along the roof, with a small piece of piping jutting out over the barrels. "Rainwater," she said, filling in the gaps.

"Yes," he agreed, "We can't light a fire for warmth, but at least they will shield us."

Beau nodded. "Should we move them?"

Caleb leaned a little harder into her as he stared at the barrels again, like just thinking made it harder to stand. Beau leaned back, using what was left of her brain this late to keep them both upright.

"Only a little bit," he concluded, "A foot or so. The back one. So we can make a little bit more cover, but anyone used to these being here won't notice from the street right away."

She grunted in agreement, taking a few more steps to get behind the two barrels.

She had to take her arm off of Caleb to grab the barrel and found herself leaning into it for stability as soon as the contact with Caleb wasn't as equal. A moment later, he let go of her and gripped at the edge of it, too.

It was solid. Stable. Undoubtedly heavy.

"Maybe it's fine," she said.

Caleb kept leaning. He was silent for a moment. For another moment. For long enough that Beau started to find it hard to stay standing, again.

"Caleb," she said.

"We will wait for Nott. If Nott says it should move, we move it."

Nodding was almost disorienting, but Beau didn't mention the increasingly real possibility that they might both be asleep before Nott made it back.

Caleb used the barrel rim to stabilize himself as he rotated around to get his back to the wall, and Beau followed behind him, more sure with every step that this barrel wasn't going _anywhere_ tonight.

They both sat down carefully, leaning against the wall, and she felt her eyes drifting shut almost immediately.

She was still just barely awake when Nott came back, her limbs pressing heavily into the hard dirt of the ground when she heard a sudden sound beside her. Her monk training was effective even without her brain involved, and as Nott tried to step over her to get to Caleb, Beau opened her eyes just in time to see her own hand punching the tiny goblin square in the gut.

Nott doubled over, gasping.

"Shit," Beau said.

A ball of light shot out of Caleb's hands, familiar but still shockingly bright in the darkness of the alley, and Beau had to blink against the suddenness of it, her eyes watering again.

"Nott, are you ok?" he asked, sounding foggy, but upset.

The goblin grinned, another familiar sight, but one that was still somehow creepy in this light. "It's ok," she said, after a deep gasp of breath, "At least we know if the crown's guard finds us, Beau won't let them take us away."

Nott climbed the rest of the way over Beau and straight into Caleb's lap, settling down and tucking her head against his shoulder and the side of the barrel next to him.

Beau reached over to wrap a hand around her nearest body part, ending up with Nott's ankle. "I'm sorry," she said.

"It's alright," Nott said again.

Caleb put his hand over hers, reaching up to vanish the floating light instead of meeting her eyes.

She nodded back in the sudden darkness, and couldn't be sure he'd seen it.

"You just need sleep," Nott said, "Both of you do. Come on. Snuggle up."

Beau shook her head. "I'm ok."

"It's going to be really cold."

"I'll be fine."

She didn't remove her hand from its place between Nott's ankle and Caleb's hand, but she didn't move closer or lean on them, either. It didn't matter. The punch had taken more energy than she had left, and she slipped into sleep anyway.

Another noise woke her, but this time she didn't lash out until after her eyes were open, and then not at all. Frumpkin had something in his mouth and she reached absently for it, realizing only after he dumped a dead mouse into her palm that her hand was numb. She dropped the mouse into her lap in surprise and Frumpkin meowed grumpily.

Her other hand was warm, still cradled in Caleb's and still wrapped around Nott, so she extricated it carefully and used it to pick the mouse up and toss it back out of her lap. Frumpkin pounced on it, and she left him to it, putting her numb hand inside the other one and rubbing it to try to warm it up.

Next to her, the other two stirred faintly and she stilled, trying not to wake them. After a moment, she turned to look and found Nott's yellow eyes staring into hers. "It's alright," she whispered, "Caleb won't mind if you use him as a heater. He's very warm."

For a moment, she considered her options, but flexing the numb hand in the cold made the answer obvious. She scooted closer, and by the time she realized Caleb was partially awake, too, it was too late and he was adjusting his position to get an arm around her.

For such a skinny man, he _did_ put out a surprising amount of heat, and his bony shoulder wasn't quite as uncomfortable as she'd expected. Nott reached out and grabbed her colder hand, whispering a soft "yikes" as she realized how cold it was and wrapped her other small hand around it, too.

Fine, then. It wasn't the first time they'd cuddled, and it probably wouldn't be the last. Caleb tried, awkwardly and with little success, to drape the edge of his ratty coat around her, then actually managed to get a little bit of his scarf around her neck, too, and she let him because it was better than having it exposed to the cold night air.

The next time she woke up, it was because Caleb had gasped loudly in her ear. He breathed heavily, and Nott woke up, too, letting go of Beau's hand to cup his face instead. Caleb closed his eyes, leaning his forehead into Nott's, and Beau closed her eyes again, trying to pretend she was still asleep instead of having to figure out what to do in this moment.

"Frumpkin," he whispered.

"Ok." Nott's voice was soft, almost more breath than whisper, but Beau opened her eyes, anyway. Caleb was gone, the flicker in his eyes indicating that he was with Frumpkin, now, wherever that meant, and Beau yawned, pretending she'd just woken up, before she adjusted her position against Caleb.

"Sorry, Beau," the wizard muttered, and she almost jumped. She _knew_ he could feel them, but since he couldn't see or hear them, it hadn't occurred to her to worry about it.

He wasn't gone for long.

"How are they?" Nott asked.

"They're alright. They're sleeping, but they're not - the breathing was steady, and I think their color might be better. It's hard to tell in the moonlight. But they are in beds, and the nurses are not right there, so probably they are alright."

Nott nodded. "Good." Then she snuggled back into Caleb's chest, and Beau wondered, if she weren't here, if Caleb would have pulled into the cuddle in response.

Giving in to an impulse she would have checked in the daylight, she grabbed his hand. "Thanks for checking," she said.

"Bitte," he whispered, but she was too tired, still, to worry about understanding Zemnian. She took the opportunity to rearrange, getting even closer to Caleb, and then Nott was helping and all three of them were tangled up, and that was alright. It was warmer this way. She drifted back off to sleep with her head on Caleb's shoulder and her legs draped across his, Nott's heels digging just slightly into her side as her feet stretched past Caleb's space.

It was too cold, and the inn would have been more comfortable, but as Caleb's breath slowed against her, all of them confident that their friends were alright and Frumpkin was close enough to communicate with to check on them, it was still worth being here.


End file.
